* Mitsubishi Electric Corporation announced Monday that it has established Mitsubishi Electric Vietnam Company Limited to coordinate sales of air-conditioning systems and home appliances. Until now, the Japanese company sold its products in Vietnam indirectly through distributors. The company said it is now positioning the country as a priority market. Annual sales of approximately US$95 million are targeted for the local company by the fiscal year ending in March 2016.

* Vincom Joint-Stock Co., Vietnam's biggest listed property company, received Vietnamese and Singaporean regulatory approval to list shares on the Singapore Stock Exchange in the third quarter of this year, chief executive officer Mai Huong Noi said in an e-mailed statement on Tuesday.

* Vietnam will this year invest about VND101 trillion ($4.9 billion) in agriculture and rural areas, up 7.1 percent from last year. The investment amounts to 51.5 percent of the country's total 2011 budget for development, the government said in a statement posted on its website on Tuesday.

* Busan Port Authority, a South Korean port developer and marine transporter, has signed an accord with Vietnam Oil & Gas Group to build and develop Phuoc An port in the southern province of Dong Nai, according to an e-mailed statement from the Vietnamese company Wednesday.

The statement didn't give a value for the project. Hanshin Construction Co., another South Korean company, signed an accord with the Vietnamese group to buy 10 percent of PetroVietnam Construction Corp., a unit of Vietnam Oil & Gas Group.

* Vietnam's banks have about $24 billion in dollar deposits as of mid-June, Thoi Bao Ngan Hang (The Banking Times) newspaper reported, citing central bank governor Nguyen Van Giau. Of that amount, $11 billion are held by individuals and $13 billion by businesses, the report said.

* The central bank approved a VND11,000-per-share minimum starting price for state-owned Mekong Housing Bank's initial public offering, it said in a statement on its website Wednesday. No timeframe for the share sale was given.

* Petrolimex, Vietnam's top oil importer and distributor, is preparing an initial public offering for July, local media quoted Vuong Thai Dung, the company's deputy general director, as saying on Wednesday. The IPO was approved in late May. The firm has said it would offer 27.43 million shares, or 2.56 percent of its registered capital of VND10.7 trillion. The state will retain a 94.99 percent stake after the sale.

* Vietnam's 130,500 barrel-per-day (bpd) Dung Quat refinery, the country's first such facility, is seeking to expand to about 200,800 bpd by 2017 and will use Middle Eastern and possibly Venezuelan crude, a plant executive said. The refinery will require $1 billion to $2 billion for the capacity expansion, said Nguyen Hoai Giang, chief executive of Binh Son Refining and Petrochemical Co, which operates Dung Quat.